The scene in Westminster Abbey; the King, standing, centre, on a dais, crowned, with a sceptre in each hand, walks towards an X-framed chair, behind which stand a row of peers; Queen Alexandra kneels, on right, the Prince of Wales in Garter robes stands beside a row of Heralds.

Gillot was invited to the Coronation and it is assumed that he attended, however he was not honoured like the Danish artist Laurits Tuxen with a view of the ceremony at close quarters and the resulting panorama bears none of the emotional intensity or finesse of Tuxen's two paintings of the ceremony (RCINs 404478, 407287).

The Times reported on 11 June, 1913 that, on visiting Gillot's exhibition at Mclean's Gallery on the Haymarket…'Their Majesties considered that the Coronation canvas displayed a sense of the true spirit of the ceremony'.

A long list of donors on the reverse of the painting, including Cammell Laird & Co.; The Cunard Steamship Company; Henry Tate & Sons and the Calico Printers Association, suggest that the painting may be a (Coronation) gift to the King and Queen from companies in and around Liverpool and Manchester.

The painting appears in a presentation album together with reproductions of the Investiture of the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon Castle, 1912 and George V and Queen Mary reviewing the Fleet, c. 1913 (RCIN 751069).

Gillot was born and trained in Paris; from 1907 he regularly spent time in London. It was here he encountered he work of J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), who became a pervasive influence on his work, as (in common with many of his impressionist contemporaries) he tried to capture the fleeting changes of light on water and through mist, specializing in views of Paris and London from the banks of the Seine and the Thames. He also completed a number of large commemorative paintings of royal subjects. He exhibited at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was awarded an honorable mention in 1900, and of which he became a member in 1901. He was appointed official painter to the French navy and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur.